This article is about Standard Mandarin Chinese. For Cantonese Chinese (official language in Hong Kong and Macau), see Cantonese phrasebook

Mandarin Chinese is the official language of Mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the official languages of Singapore. In English, it is often just called "Mandarin" or "Chinese". In China, it is called Putonghua (普通话), meaning "common speech", while in Taiwan it is referred to as Guoyu (國語), "the national language." It has been the main language of education in the People's Republic of China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau) since the 1950s.

Note that while the spoken Mandarin in the above places is more or less the same, the written characters are different. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau all still use traditional characters, whereas Mainland China and Singapore use a simplified derivative.

China is host to a wide variety of related languages (often referred to as dialects), of which Standard Mandarin is just one register. Within the Chinese language family, there are 7-10 major branches, each of which contain their own varieties of languages. Languages from different branches (such as Mandarin and Cantonese) are completely mutually unintelligible, whereas languages within the same branch (such as Standard Mandarin and Sichuanese) may share limited intelligibility.

Despite the wide variance in Chinese languages, they all share the same standardized writing system (using either Traditional or Simplified character sets). This is made possible by the fact that the Chinese writing system is logographic, meaning individual characters represent ideas as opposed to phonetic sounds. What this means is that one character which would be pronounced completely differently in any number of Chinese languages will all be written identically and understood to mean the same thing. Therefore speakers of different Chinese languages who are completely unable to understand each others' spoken speech can effectively communicate via writing. The challenge with a logographic writing system, however, is the huge number of characters required to adequately represent different words: The average Chinese dictionary indexes ~20,000 characters, with an educated Chinese person likely knowing around ~8,000, while a typical newspaper requires the reader to know at least 3,000 characters.

Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), formal simplifications were made to approximately 8,300 characters in order to reduce the number of strokes required to write them, with the aim of increasing literacy. This has led to a two current standards for Chinese writing: Simplified and Traditional characters. Simplified characters are the standard for Singapore and the mainland PRC, whereas Traditional characters are retained as the standard in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

About one fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language. It is a tonal language that is related to Burmese and Tibetan. The Vietnamese language (which uses a distinctive version of the Latin alphabet) has borrowed many words from Chinese and at one time used Chinese characters as well. In addition, the Dungan language, which is spoken in some parts of Russia, is considered to be a variant of Mandarin but uses the Cyrillic alphabet instead of Chinese characters.

The writing system is used by other countries as well, although the languages are not related. The Korean writing system historically used Chinese characters, but completely adopted their own 'Hangul' system since the 1950's. South Koreans still learn the basics of Chinese characters, and some basic Chinese characters are still occasionally used and widely understood; Japanese uses a mixed writing system comprising of Chinese characters and its own 'kana' system, although over time the meaning of some characters has diverged significantly from those used in China.

Standard Mandarin is based on the Mandarin dialect of the Beijing area, and is almost universally understood and spoken (in conjunction with local languages) across China and Taiwan as a result of being the primary language of education and the media. Travelers headed to the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong or Macau will largely encounter native Cantonese speakers. Mandarin is largely understood in the SARs, though speaking ability varies widely. Those heading for Taiwan or southern Fujian may find the Minnan dialect useful as well.

Chinese is infamous for being difficult to learn. While English speakers will initially have problems with the tones, acquiring vocabulary (since Chinese has few loan words from European languages), and recognizing the many different characters, the grammar is refreshingly simple. Most notably, Chinese grammar does not have conjugation, tenses, gender, plurals or other complicated grammatical rules found in other major languages such as English or French.

The pronunciation guide below uses Hanyu pinyin, the official romanization of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. Until recently, Taiwan used the Wade-Giles system, which is quite different, then switched to Tongyong pinyin, only slightly different from Hanyu pinyin, and now officially uses Hanyu pinyin just like the People's Republic.

Pinyin allows very accurate pronunciation of Mandarin for those who understand it, although the way that it uses letters like q, x, c, z and even i is not at all intuitive to the English speaker since some of these sounds do not exist in English or many other languages. Thus, studying the pronunciation guide below carefully is essential. After you master the pronunciation you will need to move on to the next challenge: using accurate tones whilst speaking.

While Hanyu pinyin is immensely useful as a pronunciation guide for Mandarin learners, it is much less useful as a form of written communication, as many Chinese cannot read pinyin, and even those that do will often find it awkward. So stick to Chinese characters for written communication.

Some pinyin vowels (especially "e", "i", "ü") can be tricky, so it is best to get a native speaker to demonstrate. Also, beware of the spelling rules listed in the exceptions below.

a

as in father; otherwise, pronounced as in "awesome"

a in ian

as "a" in "cat" or "back" (just the English short "a" sound)

e

unrounded back vowel (IPA [ɤ]), similar to duh; in unstressed syllables, a schwa (IPA [ə]), like idea

i

as in see or key;after sh, zh, s, z or r, not really a vowel at all but just a stretched-out consonant sound

Chinese stops distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated, not unvoiced and voiced as in English, and Chinese lacks voiced stops. Aspirated sounds are pronounced with a distinctive puff of air as they are pronounced in English when at the beginning of a word, while unaspirated sounds are pronounced without the puff, as in English when found in clusters.

Place a hand in front of your mouth and compare pit (aspirated) with spit (unaspirated) to see the difference. Note that the list below only gives approximate pronunciations, as many of these consonants have no equivalent in English. As Mandarin does not have voiced stops or affricates, all the consonants listed in the "unaspirated" column should be pronounced unvoiced.

Unaspirated

Aspirated

b

as in spot

p

as in pit

d

as in stop

t

as in tongue

g

as in skin

k

as in king

j

as in itchy

q

as in cheap

zh

as in jungle

ch

as in chore

z

as in pizza

c

as in rats

Here are the other consonants in Chinese:

m

as in mow

f

as in fun

n

as in none or none

l

as in lease

h

as in her

x

as in sheep, but softer than sh

sh

as in shoot

r

as in fair

s

as in sag

ng

as in sing

w

as in wing but silent in wu. Before a, ai, ang, eng, and/or o

y

as in yet but silent in yi, yu

If you think that is a fairly intimidating repertoire, rest assured that many Chinese people, particularly those who are not native Mandarin speakers, will merge many of the sounds above (especially c with ch and z with zh).

If you are confused by how to put tone marks above the Hanyu Pinyin, follow the steps below:

Always insert tone marks above the vowels. If there is more than one vowel letter, follow the steps below:

(1) Insert it above the 'a' if that letter is present. For example, it is rǎo and not raǒ

(2) If not, insert it above 'o'. For example, guó and not gúo

(3) Insert it above the letter 'e' if the letters 'a' and 'o' are not present. For example, jué and not júe

(4) If only 'i', 'u' and 'ü' are the only present letters, insert it in the letter that occurs last. For example, jiù and not jìu, chuí and not chúi. Note, if the vowel present is ü, the tone mark is put in addition to the umlaut. For example, lǜ

There are four tones in Mandarin that must be followed for proper pronunciation. Never underestimate the importance of these tones. Consider a vowel with a different tone as simply a different vowel altogether, and you will realize why Chinese will not understand you if you use the wrong tone — mǎ is to mā as "I want a cake" is to "I want a coke". Be especially wary of questions that have a falling tone, or conversely exclamations that have an "asking" tone (eg jǐngchá, police). In other words, pronounced like does not imply meaning. While Mandarin speakers also vary their tone just like English speakers do to differentiate a statement from a question and convey emotion, this is much more subtle than in English. Do not try it until you have mastered the basic tones.

1. first tone ( ā )

flat, high pitch that is more sung instead of spoken.

2. second tone ( á )

low to middle, rising pitch that is pronounced like the end of a question phrase (Whát?).

3. third tone ( ǎ )

middle to low to high, dipping pitch: for two consecutive syllables in the third tone, the first syllable is pronounced as if it is in the second tone. For example, 打扰 dǎrǎo is pronounced as dárǎo.

4. fourth tone ( à )

high to low, rapidly falling pitch that is pronounced like a command (Stop!).

5. fifth tone

neutral pitch that is rarely used by itself (except for phrase particles) but frequently occurs as the second part of a phrase.

Chinese numbers are very regular. While Western numerals have become more common, the Chinese numerals shown below are still used, particularly in informal contexts like markets. The characters after the slash are generally used in financial contexts, such as writing cheques and printing banknotes.

0

〇 (〇) / 零 (零) líng

1

一 (一) / 壹 (壹) yī

2

二 (二) / 贰 (貳) èr (两(兩) liǎng is used when specifying quantities)

3

三 (三) / 叁 (參) sān

4

四 (四) / 肆 (肆) sì

5

五 (五) / 伍 (伍) wǔ

6

六 (六) / 陆 (陸) liù

7

七 (七) / 柒 (柒) qī

8

八 (八) / 捌 (捌) bā

9

九 (九) / 玖 (玖) jiǔ

10

十 (十) / 拾 (拾) shí

11

十一 (十一) shí-yī

12

十二 (十二) shí-èr

13

十三 (十三) shí-sān

14

十四 (十四) shí-sì

15

十五 (十五) shí-wǔ

16

十六 (十六) shí-liù

17

十七 (十七) shí-qī

18

十八 (十八) shí-bā

19

十九 (十九) shí-jiǔ

20

二十 (二十) èr-shí

21

二十一 (二十一) èr-shí-yī

22

二十二 (二十二) èr-shí-èr

23

二十三 (二十三) èr-shí-sān

30

三十 (三十) sān-shí

40

四十 (四十) sì-shí

50

五十 五十) wǔ-shí

60

六十 (六十) liù-shí

70

七十 (七十) qī-shí

80

八十 (八十) bā-shí

90

九十 (九十) jiǔ-shí

For numbers above 100, any "gaps" must be filled in with 零 líng, as e.g. 一百一 yībǎiyī would otherwise be taken as shorthand for "110". A single unit of tens may be written and pronounced either 一十 yīshí or just 十 shí.

100

一百 (一百) yī-bǎi

101

一百零一 (一百零一) yī-bǎi-líng-yī

110

一百一十 (一百一十) yī-bǎi-yī-shí

111

一百一十一 (一百一十一) yī-bǎi-yī-shí-yī

200

二百 (二百) èr-bǎi / 两百 (兩百) liǎng-bǎi

300

三百 (三百) sān-bǎi

500

五百 (五百) wǔ-bǎi

1000

一千 (一千 yī-qiān

2000

二千 (二千) èr-qiān / 两千 (兩千) liǎng-qiān

Numbers starting from 10,000 are grouped by in units of four digits starting with 万 (萬) wàn (ten thousand). "One million" in Chinese is thus "hundred ten-thousands" 一百万 (一百萬).

Measure words are used in combination with a number to indicate an amount of mass nouns, similar to how English requires "two pieces of paper" rather than just "two paper". w:measure_word When unsure, use 个 (個) ge; even though it may not be correct, you will probably be understood because it is the most common measure word. (One person: 一个人 (一個人) yīgè rén; two apples: 两个苹果 (兩個蘋果) liǎnggè píngguǒ; note that two of something always uses 两 (兩) liǎng rather than 二 (二) èr).

If you are attempting to name a date in the Chinese lunar calendar, add the words 农历 (農歷) before the name of the month to distinguish it from the months of the solar calendar, although it is not strictly necessary. There are some differences: The words 日(日) rì/ 号(號) hào are generally not required when stating dates in the lunar calendar; it is assumed. Besides that, the 1st Month is called 正月 (正月) zhēngyuè. If the number of the day is less than 11, the word 初 (初) is used before the value of the day. Besides that, if the value of the day is more than 20, the word 廿 (廿) niàn is used, so the 23rd day is 廿三 (廿三) for example.

15th day of the 8th lunar month (the mid-autumn festival)

(农历)八月十五 ((農歷)八月十五) (nónglì) bāyuè shí-wǔ.

1st day of the 1st lunar month

(农历)正月初一 ((農歷)正月初一) (nónglì) zhèngyuè chūyī.

23rd day of the 9th lunar month

(农历)九月廿三 ((農歷)九月廿三) (nónglì) jiŭ yuè niànsān.

When writing the date, you name the month (number (1-12) + 月 (月) yuè), before inserting the day (number (1-31) + 日(日) rì/ 号(號) hào). Note that the usage of 号(號) hào, which is more often used in spoken language, is more colloquial than that of 日(日) rì, which is more often used in written documents.

Bargaining (还价 (還價) huán jià) is possible (and expected) in markets and many small shops. The first price you are given will usually be hugely inflated - it's up to you to haggle it down to something more acceptable. This will probably feel awkward if you aren't used to it, and you may worry about ending up cheating the seller. Don't worry - sellers won't take a price that's too low, and you will usually end up agreeing on a price that's considerably lower than the starting one but still allows the seller to make a profit. Try starting at around 20-30% of the original price; you can always work up from there. The exceptions to the rule are supermarkets, large department stores, bookshops and some of the higher end boutiques, most of which will have signs letting you know that haggling is unacceptable in these stores.

In most Chinese cities, there are no telephone booths. Instead, small street shops have telephones which can usually be used for national calls. Look for signs like this:

公用电话 (公用電話) Public Telephone

Most cafes are cheaper than in hotels. Many mid-range hotels and chains now offer free wireless or plug-in internet. Those cafes are quite hidden sometimes and you should look for the following Chinese characters:

Chinese language learning is flourishing as foreigners recognize the importance of gaining the ability to effectively communicate with a population of 1.3+ billion people. Due to the rapid rise of the Chinese teaching industry however, finding consistent quality instruction can be difficult. Many Chinese language schools and institutes have opened up over the past decade both abroad as well as within China, though before enrolling it is definitely recommended to thoroughly research and speak with current or former students to ensure that effective education is being provided.

For independent learners, it is imperative that one first master tones and the pinyin system before beginning to build vocabulary. The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) or Chinese Proficiency Test is China's standardized test for Chinese language proficiency (equivalent to the English TOEFL or IELTS). The HSK provides detailed guides for essential vocabulary and grammatical concepts in increasing level of fluency up to Level VI, which represents full written and oral abilities in the language. A good idea for practicing is to make Chinese friends online since millions of young people in China also look for somebody to practice English with.